As a YouTube/ASMR creator myself since early 2012 (launched my YouTube channel September 2011 prior to serendipitously discovering ASMR months later), and thinking about the environment more and more around the time of this post (I’ve always thought of the environment since like my 20’s in the 1990’s or early 30’s in the 2000’s), I decided, Saturday morning of January 10, 2026, to whip up this quick and dirty little video about how wonderful ASMR is, yet at the same time, how harmful it, we, are to the environment.

The irony of it all is quite tragic. And funny. Tragically funny.

I used Google Gemini Pro to pull this data, so it should be accurate. It is not all-inclusive, meaning: there are probably plenty of other environmental factors not accounted for, such as the number of cars creators & consumers alike drive and that impact. Again, as I stated in the video, this isn’t meant to be the single most in-depth video ever made on the topic. It’s a thought I had and I put it together as quick as I could just to touch on the main issues.

12 Million Hectares of Factory Farming

• 0.2 to 0.5 hectares of land to feed a person on a standard Western diet (heavy on meat/dairy).
• 50 million ASMR people (mostly viewers) times 0.24 hectares = 12 Million Hectares
• Includes Mukbang creators who have a much higher “land-per-video” cost
• An area the size of Greece is farmed just to sustain the people watching the videos

36 Million Tons of Landfill Waste

• 0.74 kg (1.6 lbs) trash per person/day ends up in a landfill (after recycling) 0.7 tons per person/year
• 50 million ASMR people times 0.72 tons = 36 Million Tons/year
• We create a mountain of waste so we can sleep, study, ease our anxiety, etc.

75 Billion Liters of Water

• Average human (especially in developed nations where ASMR is popular) has a water footprint of roughly 3,000 to 5,000 liters per day
• Includes water to grow their food (meat is huge here), make their clothes, generate their electricity
• 50 million people times 1,500 liters (conservative low-end estimate) = 75 Billion Liters
• We use enough water to fill 30,000 Olympic pools every day so the ASMR masses stay hydrated

5 Billion Plastic Bottles

• Bottles (water, shampoo, detergent) per person. Includes ASMR creators’ plastic triggers
• 50 million ASMR people times 100 bottles = 5 Billion Bottles/year
• Includes land required for the massive amounts of food in Mukbang videos and the “agricultural aesthetic” props
• We discard billions of bottles so we can watch (pay) ASMR creators to tap on them because its tingly and soothing

Then there is the overall environmental impact of YouTube and social media itself on a large scale, not to mention other things I briefly mentioned in the video such as sports, concerts, fan impact (mostly travel), etc., but that is an entirely separate video and discussion: the environmental cost of entertainment as a whole, as well as humanity’s overall ongoing impact (with or without AI).